Several guided and unguided sub-surface (i.e., underground) boring tools are currently on the market. Guided tools require substantially continuous location and orientation monitoring to provide necessary steering information. To monitor such an underground tool it is necessary to track the sub-surface location of the tool. Only once the location of the tool is located can a proper depth measurement be obtained, for example, from a measuring position directly above the head of the boring tool which houses a transmitter. Unguided tools would also benefit from periodic locating or substantially continuous monitoring, for example, in prevention of significant deviation from planned tool pathways and close tool approaches to utilities or other sub-surface obstructions.
One method for locating such sub-surface boring tools includes mounting a magnetic field source on the boring tool and detecting the magnetic field from that field source. This field source can be, for example, a solenoid, or any equivalent transponder capable of generating the magnetic field. When alternating current flows through the solenoid a bipolar magnetic field is thereby generated, which can be detected at the surface by a monitoring device. A vertical component of the magnetic field at the surface will change direction when the monitoring device is directly above the solenoid, assuming the solenoid is horizontal. Therefore by noting the position in which that component of the field reverses, the position of the solenoid in a horizontal plane can be determined. If this is done continuously, the movement of the boring tool on which the solenoid is mounted can be tracked. The depth of the solenoid can also be gauged by measuring the attenuation of the field at the surface. This requires the field strength at the solenoid to be known.
As described above, determinations of the location of underground boring tools rely upon magnetic field measurements. Thus, the reliability and accuracy of such location determinations can be adversely affected when the magnetic field measurements are corrupted. More specifically, the location determinations can be adversely affected at the monitoring device. The primary sources of magnetic field interference in this environment are power distribution networks. Overhead and/or underground power lines of such power distribution networks produce harmonically derived interference signals at regular harmonic intervals of their fundamental frequencies, 50 Hz (±0.1 Hz) or 60 Hz (±0.1 Hz), through to well above 10 kHz. Besides adversely affecting the reliability and accuracy of location determinations, magnetic field interference can cause instability in location determinations calculated by the monitoring device, thereby causing a location display to appear unstable to an observer (i.e., user of the monitoring device). Accordingly, there is a need to reduce the effects of such interference, to thereby improve the reliability and accuracy of location determinations, and the stability of a display of the location.
It is often useful to know more than just the location of a boring tool. For example, it is often useful to know the orientation (e.g., yaw, pitch and/or roll) of the tool. To provide this information, the magnetic field generated (e.g., by the underground transponder) is modulated to impart modulated information thereon that can be demodulated and thus obtained (made available) at the monitoring device. Existing monitoring systems provide limited data throughput (i.e., data transmission bandwidth from the transponder to the monitoring device), in part due to the need to avoid data corruption by magnetic field interference. Accordingly, there is a need to increase the data throughput that can be achieved in an environment that includes the interference described above.